Comment 4 for bug 815951

For the record (for others readers who may search for a solution to this issue).

Selecting the desired text object is a lot easier with a Alt+mouse wheel scroll feature that is coming in Inkscape 0.49. This cycles the objects under cursor and transitionally renders non-selected objects in semitransparent objects. This makes reading the selected text possible. (Thanks suv)

Unfortunately, all objects become opaque once again as soon as Alt key is released so editing the text is still an issue. If the text is completely unreadable then the (somewhat inconvenient) solution is to go to Text and Font->Text dialog box (Shift+Ctrl+T) and edit it there.